Dolly Dress: I just wanted to cry – Part 1

I was SO excited to find out that my dress would be in my hot little hands this week!

On Wednesday afternoon after work I found the orange slip in my mailbox that I had missed the mailman by 20 min 😦 The post office now had my dress.

Thursday morning at work the little orange slip in my purse taunted me. I couldn’t leave early though and I was really dreading the lunch hour crowd at our local post office. I decided to brave the trip anyway and at about 1pm I had the box in my car

There was really no way that I was gonna be able to wait to open the box at my mom’s house, so I carefully tore into it and lifted out the garment bag that contained my dress.

Then I slowly unzipped the garment bag. I could see the beautiful champagne silk peeking out. I carefully reached in and gathered up the bottom of the dress and pulled it out of the garment bag.

The criss cross bodice looked just like I imagined.

The silk had the perfect about of sheen and warmth. Then I lifted the skirt to admire the custom royal blue petticoat.

Hmmmm …. that petticoat doesn’t feel right. It felt stiff and not at all like the soft netting that was described to me. The color looked very dark as well. Not the vibrant royal blue that I saw in the original photo I used as my guide for picking the color.

I didn’t start panicking. I thought it would be okay once I put the dress on at my mom’s house. I carefully tucked the dress back into the garment bag and zipped it up.

Once at my mom’s house I tore into the dress a little faster since I knew I was going to be putting it on. I had to walk out to have my mom zip up the back and thought it was odd that the skirt didn’t fit thru the doorway. I understand I am a big girl, but that just didn’t seem right.

I stepped into the living room and was less than pleased with the first words out of my mom’s mouth. I may or may not have snapped at her (sorry mom). The moment just wasn’t what I had thought it would be. The dress seemed really poofy, my mom didn’t have the “oh you are so beautiful” look on her face, the straps on the shoulders didn’t feel right and the neckline seemed very low. It just wasn’t “perfect”

Mom started messing with the tulle to see if it was just bunched up too much and she tried to smooth it out. It helped a little with the poof, but not much. That is really when I started to realize the petticoat was wrong. Instead of 3 layers of soft netting and one top layer of stiff tulle the dress had 4 layers of stiff tulle. It was basically a DOUBLE full petticoat! Mom and I also agreed that the blue seemed a little “off”. My daughter actually called it purple! Yikes!

Finally I just took the dress off and hung it back up. I was let down. I was disappointed. I was on the brink of tears.

Later that evening I went over ALL of my emails between Dolly, the Sales Rep and the Petticoat designer. I looked at the sample photos I had sent and decided to email all three. Stay tuned to find out their responses.